It’s interesting enough stuff but it’s important to bear in mind that the focus of this survey is quite narrow, since it’s really a piece of market research into driven shooting and salmon fishing. As such, it’s perfectly fine, but it obviously appeals only to the premium end of the market. What I’d like to see is an equivalent study into the overall fieldsports landscape. The perception is that driven pheasant and partridge shooting is the dominant form of sport in this country, and this may be true, but there’s a huge range even within that. Most participants probably have a range of interests from wildfowling to stalking, through pest control, ferreting and so on. Much of this is non-commercial in nature, even if it attracts a cost, but isn’t done for profit. Obviously this not-for-much-profit area isn’t of huge interest to commercial driven shooting operators, unless they can get their mitts on it. The fact is that in this study, the average gun is spending about £5000 a year on driven shooting, and the average price of their shotguns is about the same. That obviously hides huge disparities: throw a £100,000 Purdey into the mix and “average” becomes meaningless. Equipment costs apart, as they’re one-off expenses, I spend something like £200 a year on wildfowling and roughshooting, and maybe twice that on stalking (excluding travel and accommodation). I’m not even on the radar for this survey as I just don’t have the cash.
It would be interesting to find out what the fieldsports landscape actually looks like from this perspective: it might knock on the head the idea that it’s the preserve of fat plutocrats in Range Rovers. Not that they’re not welcome, but lots of people don’t fit that image, because frankly, there aren’t enough of them to make up the numbers!
May be an idea for an SD survey? I don’t know if BASC has done anything like this.